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Monday, February 22, 2016

Austrian actor Marisa
Mell (born Marlies Theres Moitzi)
is remembered by most as a sexy ‘60s cult icon, particularly as Diabolik’s
girlfriend/partner-in-crime, Eva, in Mario
Bava’s comic adaptation Danger:
Diabolik (1968), but Mell also
starred in a fine line of Euro-thriller dramas, usually playing the seductive
swindler-murderess type – Death will
Have your Eyes (1974) and Diary of
an Erotic Murderess (1975) to name a couple. Her particular
attention-grabbing, statuesque presence could make the most routine mystery
plot a delight to sit through. However, she was underutilized in her movie
career in certain respects; considering her demigoddess-like physiognomy, it’s
unfortunate that she didn’t play more fantastical or otherworldly characters in
fantasy or horror films; and along with Margaret
Lee, I thought of her as a Eurospy girl that should’ve eventually been a
real Bond girl.

A number of Marisa Mell
starring vehicles currently suffer from not having proper releases, such as a
little seen Spanish/Italian mystery thriller, directed and co-written by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde, called Marta aka …dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora. I had been interested
in checking it out for a while, and when a reader mentioned the film to me, I
was finally driven to track down a copy and watch it. The version I first
watched didn’t have the best image quality, but even worse was that it had all
of Marisa Mell’s nude scenes edited
out (the nerve), but I liked it
enough to buy a DVD-R of the uncut version, which, sadly, was of even lower
image quality; Marta is obviously in
need of proper restoration.